defends himself in the twinkling of an eye. But through nearly the whole
of Coventry Patmore's poetry there is an endurance of the mortal touch.
Nay, more, he has the endurance of the immortal touch. That is, his
capacity for all the things that men elude for their greatness is more
than the capacity of other men. He endures therefore what they could but
will not endure and, besides this, degrees that they cannot apprehend.
Thus, to have studied _The Unknown Eros_ is to have had a certain
experience--at least the impassioned experience of a compassion; but it
is also to have recognised a soul beyond our compassion.

What some of the Odes have to sing of, their author does not insist upon
our knowing. He leaves more liberty for a well-intentioned reader's
error than makes for peace and recollection of mind in reading. That the
general purpose of the poems is obscure is inevitable. It has the
obscurity of profound clear waters. What the poet chiefly secures to us
is the understanding that love and its bonds, its bestowal and reception,
does but rehearse the action of the union of God with humanity--that
there is no essential man save Christ, and no essential woman except the
soul of mankind. When the singer of a Song of Songs seems to borrow the
phrase of human love, it is rather that human love had first borrowed the
truths of the love of God. The thought grows gay in the three _Psyche_
odes, or attempts a gaiety--the reader at least being somewhat reluctant.
How is it? Mr. Coventry Patmore's play more often than not wins you to
but a slow participation. Perhaps because some thrust of his has left
you still tremulous.

But the inequality of equal lovers, sung in these Odes with a Divine
allusion, is a most familiar truth. Love that is passionate has much of
the impulse of gravitation--gravitation that is not falling, as there is
no downfall in the precipitation of the sidereal skies. The love of the